If you're reading this in the middle of winter with a heater going full blast, turn it down and put on a sweater. (If you're reading in the middle of summer with the aircon going full blast, turn its thermostat up and take off a sweater.) That's two!

The same principle applies here, too. In any case people taking off or using sweaters isn't going to make any impact on industrial energy consumption.

And so on … most of us have been told these things before, haven't we? They do work and will make a real difference if enough of us do them - and even more difference as our example spreads until this thinking becomes the new normal.

If energy is available to be consumed at an affordable rate, societies will consume it.

If you want people to decrease energy consumption, you need to heavily tax it and make it unaffordable to waste, but then that leads to economic problems and the masses upset with over taxation.

And don't you dare say it's futile!

I think it is futile. We're living unsustainable lifestyles that damage the planet, and putting on a sweater instead of using the heater is a drop in the bucket that does not even begin to address the problems. It might make people feel less guilty for wrecking the planet with their decadence, like clicking "like" on a Greenpeace Facebook post.

I believe the system will runs its course. Fossil fuels will be used up, the planet will cook and as resource limits kick in human population levels will decrease given the hard limits. Resource wars are already being fought and this will only amplify over time. Much of our social complexity will unravel leading to a loss of advanced technologies as they become unaffordable and irrelevant to people scraping by as subsistence farmers like they did before industrialization. As darkness descends over the land and extreme heat and floods ravage once fertile lands there will be great suffering as the sting of kaliyuga becomes more and more pronounced.

If you think that's delusional, just think about how much energy industrial civilization needs to sustain itself and where most of it comes from. It comes from fossil fuels, the consumption of which is leading to horrific climate change. There are no alternatives to concentrated solar energy in the form of oil, coal and natural gas, though these substances when burnt are disrupting the atmosphere and warming the planet.

Once the fossil fuels become unaffordable to extract and energy availability rapidly declines the reverse of industrialization will occur, but in the new environment of rapid climate change and all its ill effects.

This is what kaliyuga looks like unfortunately.

Okay, we can't stop bad things happening - but we can reduce them. We have a simple choice: we deploy every single wedge we can find, as quickly as we can, or we make life worse than it need be for everyone alive in ten years, twenty years, fifty years from now.

Huseng's response to climate change could certainly be labelled 'despair' and I obviously don't think it's the best response. But I began to wonder whether despair is ever the best response to any problem and I haven't been able to come up with any scenario in which there aren't any better alternatives. Despair makes you unhappy - which is never good in itself, IMO - so right away you could say equanimity is better than despair even if no action is possible.Despair robs you of the strength to do anything about the problem even when some action - however limited - is possible (and that's the situation with climate change). Despair and its cousins inertia, defeatism and discouragement can also become habitual. They are the easiest (but least productive) response to any difficulty, however trivial, and in extreme cases they can take over and run your life into the ground. What's the solution? Mindfulness, alertness, mindfulness, courage, mindfulness, compassion, mindfulness ...

Kim O'Hara wrote:Huseng's response to climate change could certainly be labelled 'despair' and I obviously don't think it's the best response. But I began to wonder whether despair is ever the best response to any problem and I haven't been able to come up with any scenario in which there aren't any better alternatives. Despair makes you unhappy - which is never good in itself, IMO - so right away you could say equanimity is better than despair even if no action is possible.

Foreknowledge sets the mind at ease. Despair is lamenting that you cannot do anything.

I did not title the video, nor was I using it as a descriptor of Huseng's understanding. But the description of the situation in this thread could certainly lead one to despair.

lowlydog wrote:Focus on these environmental issues is a trap, watch your own actions, be a shining example of the dharma. Who gives a fiddlers fart what others are doing? We have no control over them.

Not only do we have no control, but we should desire no control over others. Being a good example, however, is something one can do. Anything is a "trap" if one allows attachment. Practicing the Noble Eightfold Path in relation to the environment is not a trap.

If they can sever like and dislike, along with greed, anger, and delusion, regardless of their difference in nature, they will all accomplish the Buddha Path.. ~ Sutra of Complete Enlightenment

viniketa wrote: Practicing the Noble Eightfold Path in relation to the environment is not a trap.

When we practice the teachings of the Buddha, we naturally lead simpler lives, and we tend to leave a smaller footprint. It think it's normal to get excited about issues like this and others, but all we can do is practice and exemplify a simple happy existence. This is a training ground, it is meant to be like this and it most likely always will be like this, full of greed, hatred, and ignorance and on the verge of destruction. We are swimming against the current, we are leaving this place, do not get to caught up with issues like this, they will consume your thoughts and destract you from your practice.

When I first became vegetarian my mind was constantly thinking about vegetarianism, can I do this? Will my health suffer? How difficult will this be? After about 6 months my mind was secure and my thoughts changed to, why aren't more people vegetarian? The way they are living is wrong? This is the ego finding a back door and identifying with concepts, making myself right and others wrong, this is the trap that we must be careful of.

viniketa wrote: Practicing the Noble Eightfold Path in relation to the environment is not a trap.

When we practice the teachings of the Buddha, we naturally lead simpler lives, and we tend to leave a smaller footprint. It think it's normal to get excited about issues like this and others, but all we can do is practice and exemplify a simple happy existence. This is a training ground, it is meant to be like this and it most likely always will be like this, full of greed, hatred, and ignorance and on the verge of destruction. We are swimming against the current, we are leaving this place, do not get to caught up with issues like this, they will consume your thoughts and destract you from your practice.

When I first became vegetarian my mind was constantly thinking about vegetarianism, can I do this? Will my health suffer? How difficult will this be? After about 6 months my mind was secure and my thoughts changed to, why aren't more people vegetarian? The way they are living is wrong? This is the ego finding a back door and identifying with concepts, making myself right and others wrong, this is the trap that we must be careful of.

Hi, lowlydog,I recognise the kind of trap you're talking about (having fallen into it more than once myself) but falling into it is avoidable, especially after the first few times. So long as our motivation remains centred on the needs of others, we can reach out and help without losing our own balance. And it need not distract from our practice - instead, it can become an integral part of our practice, as a form of dana. And if we are mindful, it quietly and gently undercuts ego-centred action and thought rather than becoming a vehicle of self-aggrandisement.If that is the case, to " practice and exemplify a simple happy existence" is not "all we can do". It is important but we can go beyond it, by speaking out against injustice, oppression and (in the climate debate) waste, pollution and dishonesty.

I have been participating in a loosely-parallel conversation over at the other DW (which is where I usually hang out, btw) and a couple of good books on Buddhism and ecology were recommended at http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=15022&p=217022#p216968. Some folk here may like to look them up if they don't know them, or comment on them if they already do.

Thanks, Jnana.Yes, the news is bad - but not (as I keep on insisting) all bad. None of these reports say "we're doomed." Rather, they say we must act as soon and intelligently as possible. Excerpts from your linked stories:

The UN agency said if no swift action is taken, emissions are likely to hit 58 gigatonnes in 2020 — 14 gigatonnes too much to have a chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees. The projected gap is now bigger than it was last year and in 2010.Transition to 'green economy' happening slowlyUNEP executive director Achim Steiner said bridging the gap remains doable, and that there are many "inspiring" actions at the national level on renewable energy, energy efficiency, protecting forests and vehicle emissions standards.

Avoiding the 4-degree-warmer world is a matter of political will, said Mann, who sees signs of optimism, including increased awareness and more calls to transition away from fossil fuels."The alternative energies (wind, solar, geothermal, etc) are there," Mann wrote in an email to LiveScience. "We just need to deploy and scale them up by investing immediately in the necessary infrastructure."Slowing the warming may be as useful as stopping it, Trenberth said."It is not just the absolute amount of warming, but also the rate at which we change things to get there," he said. "Two degrees warming in 50 years is extremely stressful, but 2 degrees warming in 500 years is perhaps manageable through adaptation."

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said: "This report is a reminder that time is running out, but that the technical means and the policy tools to allow the world to stay below a maximum 2 degrees Celsius are still available to governments and societies. Governments meeting in Doha for COP18 now need to urgently implement existing decisions which will allow for a swifter transition towards a low-carbon and resilient world. Governments need to urgently identify how ambition can be raised."

My glass is still half full ... well, at least a third full. How about yours?

Kim O'Hara wrote:My glass is still half full ... well, at least a third full. How about yours?

I'm not sure. There are still some rather disturbing trends such as (1) the fact that the fossil fuel industry fully intends to sell every drop of oil and every gram of coal that they have already factored in to their reserves, and (2) the impact of the climate change skeptics on legislation even now that the science is settled and even though a majority of people now believe that climate change is real.

Huseng wrote:Foreknowledge sets the mind at ease. Despair is lamenting that you cannot do anything.

Hi, Huseng,That's true, but how does it apply here? As far as I can see, you don't have foreknowledge and you can do something.No-one has foreknowledge of such a chaotic system as world politics and climate. People with the most expertise in climate science present their predictions in terms of possible scenarios - what will happen to climate under BAU, slight reduction of emissions and significant reduction of emissions, for instance. And people with the most expertise in politics hedge their predictions or get caught out - or both. Everyone can do something, however small. A while ago you said that one of my suggested actions was "only a drop in a bucket" OWTTE. You were right, and I will freely admit that it would be a small drop in a very big bucket. But if you leave a bucket out in the rain for long enough, it will fill up, one drop at a time.

When I was kid there was a fund-raising fad which involved starting a line of pennies along a pavement or church aisle or whatever. Each person was only asked for a penny but it sure added up after a while; and one of the reasons it mounted up was the power of exemplary action. Every person who contributed made it harder for others to ignore the cause, and that process is already well underway in climate activism. C'mon, give us your penny!

Kim O'Hara wrote:That's true, but how does it apply here? As far as I can see, you don't have foreknowledge and you can do something.

Foreknowledge can be knowledge gained by extrapolation based on current trends and circumstances.

There is little effort to truly address climate change, the acidification of oceans and the vast human population breeding out of control.

Hence, we can infer with certainty that given a lack of political will to address these problems that things will only get worse. The planet will heat up, megafauna will die off in large numbers (this is already occurring) and overpopulation will lead to various social problems while amplifying local environment problems around the world.

You might argue that we can't know that for sure and that solutions or some miracle technology might arise, but I have no reason to see otherwise at the moment. I think if you're realistic about how human societies operate you'll know that given access to affordable energy it will be consumed. The consequences are not immediately seen and the tolerance level for wretched pollution is rather high among humans. Unless babies are born without brains people will tolerate the most foul air if it means they'll get their magic paper money.

So, nothing will be done, the process will run its course and industrial civilization will come apart. Environmental issues aside, the shift from a cheap energy economy to an expensive energy economy will render a lot of our lifestyles simply unaffordable energy-wise and the resulting paradigm shift will be psychologically devastating to most people brought up thinking they're entitled to things like free education, pensions, state healthcare, ambulance services, etc... It is enough to make a lot of people simply give up on life and die from disappointment. I already see this with my generation who despite all their hard work getting an education are not receiving the rewards they thought they were entitled to.

We can know ahead of time that great darkness will descend across the land and as the kaliyuga progresses much suffering will be experienced by humans and animals alike. Our wretched modern industrial civilization will eat up whatever last resources it can obtain before finally dying. This is a time of decline and decay.

Such foreknowledge sets the mind at ease because we know what to expect. It means plan for decline. Don't have mundane aspirations that will go unfulfilled. Avoid investing your time in senseless projects like a business career or some other mundane endeavour. Drop all feelings of entitlement. Know that things will get worse and that in due time there will be less available for use than before.

There is nothing you can really do about the situation. History works in cycles and we're just on the downward arc this time around. That doesn't mean falling into endless despair and depression, or hedonism. It means being realistic about the circumstances you were born into and accepting fate. Like any other age it is still saṃsāra and ideally merit and wisdom will be cultivated regardless. You can't change fate, but you can work within the circumstances to mitigate suffering and hopefully help others. Our present civilization has overshot its resource base and must crash and burn like all others which did likewise in the past. That doesn't mean as an individual you don't have options.

Everyone can do something, however small. A while ago you said that one of my suggested actions was "only a drop in a bucket" OWTTE. You were right, and I will freely admit that it would be a small drop in a very big bucket. But if you leave a bucket out in the rain for long enough, it will fill up, one drop at a time.

Unfortunately the rate of evaporation is faster in this case.

C'mon, give us your penny!

If only it was so easy.

Think of all the plastic we wrap our food in alone. Imagine trying to get everyone to stop using such packaging. The only way it'll stop is when plastic packaging becomes uneconomical to produce. You might get people to "reduce, reuse and recycle", but they're still using earth killing products. Even if you recycle plastic the whole system which produces it from the oil well to the fridge are hurting our planet's ecosystem.

Recycling might make people feel less guilty, but they're still committing the same sin.

Jnana wrote:I'm not sure. There are still some rather disturbing trends such as (1) the fact that the fossil fuel industry fully intends to sell every drop of oil and every gram of coal that they have already factored in to their reserves, and (2) the impact of the climate change skeptics on legislation even now that the science is settled and even though a majority of people now believe that climate change is real.

The alternative to climate change is economic destitution (we get both anyway if we choose the former) and reverting back to a standard of living like in the 1930s. A lot more people would need to produce food with hand tools in the hot(ter) sun with minimal plastic and other such synthetic substances. We'd be a lot poorer and life would need to get a lot simpler.

In countries like China and India that is not even conceivable. Political stability is unwisely dependent on industrial growth. In North America people might think being an organic farmer would be swell, but they're not really prepared for such a lifestyle. Especially any generation born after WWII.

The problem as Dr. Joseph Tainter has pointed out is that with increased complexity in a given society it is very unlikely that complexity will be willingly decreased or sacrificed. The strain on a resource hungry society is temporarily remedied through legitimization and policing (which we see a lot of nowadays), but in the long-term that just puts additional resource demands on the system and it ultimately collapses.

The other issue is that reducing energy consumption (which is needed to save the environment) would be economic contraction, which is very difficult to willingly accept from a military point of view.

Hello again, Huseng,Your last two posts seem to me to be little more than an amplification of your OP so I still see the same flaws in your thinking. One is that you treat the problem as though it is monolithic - a twenty-ton boulder landing in our front yard, completely beyond our ability to remove without heavy machinery we don't have. It isn't. It is (to use a piece of legalistic jargon) divisible - more like a twenty-ton pile of gravel than a boulder. We can tackle little bits of it, successfully, and mitigate it; we can tackle big bits gradually, and thereby soften the impact of our solutions.Another is that you avoid recognising any of the good news: the huge growth in renewable energy sources, the rise of Greens parties around the world, etc, etc. A third is that you deny our ability to change our behaviour. I think that's quite problematic, in itself, for a Buddhist, but it also adds to the gloom of your predictions of our future. Here is a response to it, by Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate:

Does reducing global warming imply changing human behaviour and is that possible?This is a more subtle question [than one answered earlier in the article] and it is sensible to break it down into questions of human nature and human actions. Human nature – the desire to strive for a better life, our inability to think rationally when trying to impress the objects of our desire, our natural selfishness and occasionally altruism, etc – is very unlikely to change anytime soon. But none of those attributes require the emission of fossil fuel-derived CO2 into the atmosphere, just as they don’t require us to pollute waterways, have lead in gasoline, use ozone-depleting chemicals in spray cans and fridges or let dogs foul the sidewalk. Nonetheless, societies in the developed world (with the possible exception of Paris) have succeeded in greatly reducing those unfortunate actions and it’s instructive to see how that happened.The first thing to note is that these issues have not been dealt with by forcing people to think about the consequences every time they make a decision. Lead in fuel was reduced because of taxation measures that aligned peoples preferences for cheaper fuel with the societal interest in reducing lead pollution. While some early adopters of unleaded-fuel cars might have done it for environmental reasons, the vast majority of people did it first because it was cheaper, and second, because after a while there was no longer an option. The human action of releasing lead into the atmosphere while driving was very clearly changed.In the 1980s, there were campaigns to raise awareness of the ozone-depletion problem that encouraged people to switch from CFC-propelled spray cans to cans with other propellants or roll-ons etc. While this may have made some difference to CFC levels, production levels were cut to zero by government mandates embedded in the Montreal Protocols and subsequent amendments. No-one needs to think about their spray can destroying the ozone layer any more.I could go on, but the fundamental issue is that people’s actions can and do change all the time as a function of multiple pressures. Some of these are economic, some are ethical, some are societal (think about our changing attitudes towards smoking, domestic violence and drunk driving). Blanket declarations that human behaviour can’t possibly change to fix a problem are therefore just nonsense....Around 1900, horse-drawn transport was the dominant mode of public and private, personal and commercial traffic in most cities. As economic activity was growing, the side-effects of horses’ dominance became ever more pressing. People often mention the issue of horse manure – picking it up and disposing of it, it’s role in spreading disease, the “intolerable stench” – but as McShane and Tarr explain that the noise and the impact of dead horses in the street were just as troublesome. Add to that the need for so many stables downtown taking up valuable city space, the provisioning of hay etc. it was clear that the benefits of the horse’s strength for moving things around came at a great cost.But in the space of about 20 years all this vanished, to be replaced with electrified trolleys and subways, and internal combustion engine-driven buses and trucks, and cars such as the Model-T Ford. Almost overnight (in societal terms), something that had been at the heart of economic activity had been been relegated to a minority leisure pursuit.This demonstrates very clearly that assumptions that society must always function the same economic way are false, and that in fact we can change the way we do business and live pretty quickly. This is good news. From: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/why-levitt-and-dubner-like-geo-engineering-and-why-they-are-wrong/

Huseng wrote:The alternative to climate change is economic destitution (we get both anyway if we choose the former) and reverting back to a standard of living like in the 1930s.

Change is coming. That's a given. Just how much upheaval will occur because of it -- that's an unknown. There are plenty of problems and obstacles standing in the way of adaptability and real sustainability. But there is also good news. There are answers. We can live much more simply. The conundrum at this point is whether or not we are willing to do so. David Owen:

People think that if only we could build a better battery or find a way to sequester carbon we will solve all our problems. But to think that solutions are only an innovation away is a delusion and a delaying tactic.

The good news is that we already have the technology we need to produce energy without fossil fuel. We already know how to reverse population growth. We have experience in how to restrain wasteful consumption. But do we honestly care? Will we actually do something about it? Or will we continue to pretend that we're on the case? That's the conundrum.

People think that if only we could build a better battery or find a way to sequester carbon we will solve all our problems. But to think that solutions are only an innovation away is a delusion and a delaying tactic.

The good news is that we already have the technology we need to produce energy without fossil fuel. We already know how to reverse population growth. We have experience in how to restrain wasteful consumption. But do we honestly care? Will we actually do something about it? Or will we continue to pretend that we're on the case? That's the conundrum.

As I understand it alternative energy sources like solar and wind cannot produce the same level of energy as fossil fuels do (particularly oil) and moreover there are hidden energy subsidies in such power sources (think of all the machinery, oil and infrastructure which goes into building a single solar panel from the trucks to the asphalt roads to the food fed to the workers).

There's also the invisible subsidy of social complexity which is a direct result of fossil fuel use. A barrel of oil is equal to about eleven years of human labour as I recall, which means that a lot of people are freed from food production for other professions such as developing solar panel technology. Without fossil fuels it is impossible that we could sustain, let alone develop (important for the third world), our current level of complexity.

We could live much much simpler lifestyles with small wind turbines on the roof, but that would mean having a limited electricity supply which was unstable. But countries like the US and her client states would rather pillage oil rich nations than willingly sacrifice and simplify. India and China are dependent on growing standards of living for their stability.

Change will come, but it won't be comfortable. Every single drop of affordable oil will be pumped and burned because our entire industrial civilization depends on it and the alternative is destitution.

Elaborating further on this idea, Hubbert, in his 1962 paper, Energy Resources – A Report to the Committee on Natural Resources, writes about the possibility of having so much cheap energy that it would be possible to essentially reverse combustion–combine lots of energy, plus carbon dioxide and water, to produce new types of fuel plus water. If we could do this, we could solve many of the world’s problems–fix our high CO2 levels, produce lots of fuel for our current vehicles, and even desalinate water, without fossil fuels.

The problem that arises if we don’t have such a substitute for fossil fuels is a severe one. How do we keep our current economy operating, if oil prices, or fossil fuels in general, become high priced, and start interfering with the economy? At some point, the interference will become so great that recession will set in, in many major oil importing nations. Oil prices will drop, and oil producers will not be able to extract oil at those prices. There may be major financial impacts as well—governments dropping out of the Euro, the US government facing a financial cliff, and other countries (Japan, Britain, and China, for example) facing difficulties as well.

In my view, the shape of down slope in oil production is likely to be steeper than the pattern by which oil supply increases. Geology determines the maximum amount of extraction, but it doesn’t determine how much will actually be extracted. Economic conditions need to be right for the extractions to take place. Low oil prices by themselves could cause political upheaval in some oil exporting nations. If there are huge international trade problems, this could reduce demand as well.

Hi, Huseng, I may respond to some of your other points later. For now, can I just say that your source here (1) has an extremely narrow focus - oil, oil, and only oil, in the US business economy; and (2) has no track record at all in climate science, and no qualifications in it. For something far broader, more authoritative and closer to the thread subject, investigate Climate Progress, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/. Why do I recommend it? "JOE ROMM is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 "people who are reinventing America." Time named him a "Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger." Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT."More generally, there is a lot of rubbish on the internet (D'oh!) and it pays to find the best and most recent information.